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BOOK VII
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155
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today
in Germany for making spoons and goblets since it is supposed to reveal
the presence of poison, and the small balls the women use in drying the
linen shawls they wear over their heads. It is also used to make the
tabular and curved stones with which we warm ourselves in winter,
especially those usually placed in beds.9 Tabular stones
are used to warm the chest and stomach and arched stones for the side,
feet and arms. From early periods to the present, artisans have made
the ointment jars they call alabaslra from alabaster and
Lygdinan marble. Statues, columns, obelisks, sepulchers, altars,
chapels, shrines and temples are made from all varieties of marble.
Basins are cut from large thick blocks and gaming boards and table tops
from thin tabular pieces. Rough brick and stone walls are sometimes
covered with thin tabular pieces. This type of work is especially
common in Sena where the walls of the temple of the Blessed Virgin are
faced with marble both inside and outside as well as the altar floor,
the basin for holy water, the floor of the temple, the high altar, the
candelabrum and the tower. There are seven varieties of marble on the
top of the altar, white, black, green, gray, light brownish red and two
mottled varieties. There are marble images of all the Roman priests in
the vault of the temple. A most magnificent temple in Florence has
marble facings as do the rectangular towers of St. Mark's in Venice and
the Temple of Wisdom in Constantinople. The walls of the home of
Augustus Tiberius were also faced with marble. Tiles are made from this
material and used in floors, for example, the floor in the living
quarters of the house used by Caesar in Goslar, Saxony, as well as in
the three temples mentioned above. The consecrated portion of the
cathedral of Pisa where they have the burial vaults at the Shrine of
St. John is paved with these tiles. Marble surpasses all other stones
for use in lithostroton (mosaic pavement). A particularly fine
example is found in the Temple of St. Agapetus in Pre-neste. This work,
done by Sulla, consists of very small pieces put together in such a
manner as to depict the exploits of Sulla. There is another mosaic
pavement in the shrine of St. John the Baptist which portrays the dome
of heaven with twelve images and in the center the sun, shown as a
charioteer. They also make mosaics which picture animals and events by
fitting together polished chips of marbles of different colors.
Heliogabalus paved streets on Palatine Hill with Laconian marble and porphyrias, covering
the Avails of the houses as well. Some of the finest inlay work was
done in the time of Nero, according to Pliny, when spots were produced
in the marbles by inserting small pieces to relieve the monotony of
color and produce an effect similar to the spots in Numidian and the
purple in Synnadan marbles. Since there is not a sufficient quantity of
naturally tabular pieces found in quarries they must be made by cutting
irregular masses. Pliny writes that they were cut with sand and we see
them cut with iron. The saw is a very thin wire that picks up sand and
when this is
8 This refers probably to a variety of soapstone.
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